DRP News Bulletin 22 January 2018 (Dams Again Being Used To Achieve Political Objectives)

As per Counter View report, a well-informed Gujarat government source has told it that a major reason why the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL) recently declared there would be “no water” from the multi-purpose irrigation scheme, Sardar Sarovar dam, to Gujarat farmers starting March 15, 2018, is Madhya Pradesh elections, scheduled for this year-end.

The source, refusing to be identified, said, “Already, massive preparations are on in Madhya Pradesh to provide as much Narmada water to the state’s farmers by storing as much water as possible. The idea is to appease the farmers with Narmada waters in the same way as it was done last year before the elections took place in Gujarat.”

As per superintending engineer, Surat irrigation circle, S P Mahakal, the water supply to canal is stopped every year for a month. However, this time it will be for a longer duration (Dec 18, 2017 to Feb 15, 2018) due to canal lining work and some repairs. The irrigation department normally supplies 4,000 million cubic metres (MCM) of water to the fields through the 4,537 km long canal network. This time it has been decided to supply 2315 MCM of water for irrigation.

DAMS

– UKAI KAKRAPAR “A few spectacular failures contributed significantly to the poor pan-India picture; a case in point was the Kakrapar project in Gujarat, whose Superintending Engineer himself described it as a “very expensive one which had miserably failed to serve its original objective and utility”. It was the first project which was carried out by the new Central Water and Power Commission (CWPC) rather than the provincial government. A weir was sanctioned by the Bombay government in 1949, but the CWPC soon modified the project to a dam costing five times as much. After some of the work had been carried out, it was decided to revert to a weir, making for great difficulties in reconciling various hydraulic features. The design was changed yet again to the construction of both a dam as well as a weir. Acute staff shortages resulted after the Bombay government took over the project as most engineers opted to return to the CWPC. Irrigation potential was first created in 1958-59, and as late as 1963-64 less than a quarter of the potential was utilised.”

– RED HERRING OF FIELD CHANNELS IS USED EVEN TODAY IN CASE OF SARDAR SAROVAR, FOR EXAMPLE “While the irrigation bureaucracy sought to evade responsibility by reducing the problem to the construction of field channels, a study by the Committee on Plan Projects emphasised that the focus on field channels was a “red herring” which diverted attention from the real problem; the lack of a profitable cropping pattern: “If a cultivator can be given a crop that yields to him a substantial income, he was willing to construct field channels himself.””

– SHEER COMEDY “Cultivators across the country showed great variance in their approach to irrigation. This was reflected most spectacularly in the fact that only 61% of the potential created had been utilised by 1971 in Bihar, which ranked 2nd in potential created, while Punjab, ranking a distant 7th, had utilised 97% of its potential. In Coimbatore, peasants paid not only for the water of the Lower Bhavani project, but also heavy fines to defy water rationing and irrigate paddy. In Raichur, Mysore, which received water from the Tungabhadra Project, however, even farmers through whose property the channels passed sometimes did not irrigate, despite heavy propaganda and the water being offered free of charge. The Hirakud project in Odisha was to enable two crops of paddy, but local belief held that the soil could not take two paddy crops. In one village, an extension officer went on hunger strike to convince farmers to sow a second crop.”

– RESPONSE TO NEHRU’s 1958 CHARGE OF DISEASE OF GIGANTISM: “The editors of the venerable Indian Journal of Power and River Valley Development founded by the acclaimed physicist Meghnad Saha in the 1930s took exception to Nehru’s charge and argued that it was wrong to single out irrigation engineers as victims of the “disease of gigantism” when “all sections of the national elite… were equally affected by the virus”. This “craze for bigness” was not confined to India but afflicted the U.S. and the USSR as well, they claimed; according to them, the only difference was that they could afford it and India couldn’t.” http://www.thehindu.com/thread/science-health-environment/whats-the-dam-problem-with-gigantic-developmentalism/article22442055.ece (The Hindu, 15 January 2018)

Pancheshwar DamIssue raised in Rajya SabhaCongress MP from Uttarakhand Mahendra Singh Mahra has said that the party will strongly raise the issue of people who would be displaced by the proposed Pancheshwar dam in Rajya Sabha during the winter session. The Rajya Sabha MP alleged that the Modi government seemed in a hurry to construct the project without taking into account the plight of those to be displaced. Good to see the Cong MP raising issues, but implicitly, he seems to be supporting the project, definitely not opposing it.http://www.ptinews.com/news/9408315_Cong-MP-to-raise-issue-of-people-to-be-displaced-by-dam.html (PTI, 16 January 2018)

INTERLINKING OF RIVERS

Godavari-Cauvery LinkTelangana to support interlinking of rivers on condition The proposal to link Godavari (Akinepalli) NSP tail pond-Cauvery (Grand anicut) should not have any adverse impact on downstream projects, he said. The Minister made it clear that TS would require about 1600 TMC of Godavari water, against its earmarked utilization of 1260 TMC. He said the proposed barrage at Akinepalli with a storage capacity of 20 TMC is likely to submerge about 35,000 acres affecting 55,000 population in 45 villages in Warangal and Khammam districts of Telangana. In addition, the canal network would require 12,000 acres of land additionally. https://telanganatoday.com/telangana-to-back-interlinking-of-rivers (Telangana Today, 18 January 2018)

Under the new proposed Godavari Cauvery Link proposal:

– The Centre had proposed building of a barrage at Akinepalli. However, this will submerge 45 villages in Warangal and Khammam, and affect 55,000 people.

– While the projected benefit is about 7.5 lakh acres, a large part of the area that would be served is already covered by existing and ongoing projects or falls under the area that would be submerged by the Polavaram project. The land that needs to be acquired for the project passes through forest area. Also, it requires 47,000 acres of land and acquiring this amount of land would take time.

– What does the Telangana government want before the project is approved? Reassessment of hydrology, Alternate options to be explored by the Central government, Choice of option that has the least adverse environmental and social impact

– They further added that while they currently receive 1,260 tmc of water from the Godavari, they needed it to be increased to 1,500 tmc. Beyond this, the state would not have a problem with water being transferred.

– The present and future requirements of the basin states must be met before water is transferred to other basins.

– The government wants hydrology to be used to ascertain the surplus water. The government pointed out that the Central Water Commission usually takes into account 40 years of water availability to assess surplus water, but in this case, 110 years were taken into account, which showed that there was 177 tmc of surplus water at Akinepalli. This, however, is not the case when only 40 years are taken into account. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/here-are-telangana-s-conditions-approve-linking-godavari-and-cauvery-74941 (The News Minute, 18 January 2018)

As per another report, the dependability on Krishna river has reduced drastically. TS has 300 tmcft of assured and 70 tmcft of surplus water in the Krishna but is not getting it now. The Centre agreed to raise the height of Almatti dam by the Karnataka government. This will reduce the flows to TS further by 100 tmcft. TS requires 1,500 tmcft to 1,600 tmcft from both Krishna and Godavari rivers for drinking and irrigation needs. The state’s share of Godavari water is 954 tmcft. It proposed to divert 370 tmcft of Godavari water to the Krishna basin, 100 tmcft for drinking needs of the state including Hyderabad and another 50 tmcft for industrial needs.”

This new proposal to transfer Godavari water to Cauvery (meeting to happened on Jan 17 in Delhi by Gadkari in view of the Karnataka assembly elections) is not likely to be convincing to Telangana or Andhra Pradesh.

– “In Phase-1 unutilised waters from the Indravati (a tributary of the Goda-vari) will be transfer-red to the Cauvery basin through three links — the Indravati-Godavari (Aknepalli site in Kottag-udem-Bhadrachalam district of Telangana State); Krishna (Nagarjuna Sagar) link; Krishna (NS Dam); Pennar (Somasila Dam) link; and Pennar (Somasila)-Cauvery (Grand Anicut).”

– “Surplus waters will be lifted from the Akinepalli barrage downstream of Inchampalli on the river Godavari and transferred to the existing Nagarjuna sagar Dam in the Krishna basin and from there the water will be further transferred to Somasila Dam in Pennar basin and to the Grand Anicut in the Cauvery basin.”

Ken Betwa Link Water Ministry to again approach Cabinet Some notable points:- As a result of the decision to club Phase-I and Phase-II of the project on MP’s demand, the MoWR also has to re-work the funding pattern and go before the Public Investment Board. The revised combined cost of the project is approximately Rs 28,000 crore and the Centre is pushing for a change in the funding pattern from 60:40 Centre-State ratio to a 90:10 ratio. Top officials from the ministry claimed that after combining Phase-I and Phase-II, a total area of 9 lakh hectares will be irrigated across both states. MP proposes that state agencies do the work, Gadkari disagrees. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-water-ministry-to-again-approach-cabinet-on-ken-betwa-river-linking-project-2576320 (DNA, 18 January 2018)

INTER STATE WATER DISPUTES

GoaParineeta Dandekar of SANDRP talking (in Marathi) about how the nationalisation/ channellisation of Zuari river here, as also other major rivers of this tiny river dependent state of Goa is being pushed without any involvement of the people of Goa in general and those dependent on the river in particular. https://www.facebook.com/parineeta.dandekar/videos/10155253672268061/

Op-EdToxic wastes, dams killing our rivers by Sudhansu R Das The Indian river system boosts agriculture and allied activities, fishery, forestry, industries, pilgrim tourism, adventure sports and transportation, etc. Over the years, the Indian river system has deteriorated due to over-damming, deforestation, encroachment, sand mining, industrial effluents, urban drainage, garbage deposit, lack of authentic data and lack of political will to implement environmental laws, etc. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/653974/toxic-wastes-dams-killing-our.html (Deccan Herald, 16 January 2018)

BrahmaputraRiver Atlas to be database to tackle floods, erosion, deforestationWELCOME INITIATIVE: –CM Sarbananda Sonowal, who had mooted the idea of preparing this comprehensive database of all major and minor rivers of the state, meanwhile has also asked NESAC to bring quality and quantity of sand and sand-layers in the river-beds within the ambit of the study. It will include details of 5000 km of embankments.

– A River Atlas that the North Eastern Space Application Centre (NESAC) is currently preparing for the government of Assam, would serve not just as a database of the Brahmaputra and its 100-odd tributaries, but also record deforestation in the region in order to help tackle recurring floods and erosion in the state.

– In October 2016, the state urban development department issued a notification changing the land-use of the patch from a no-development zone to regional park based on a proposal by City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) to develop a golf course and a residential colony on 67 of the 80-hectare land.

– The couple met Vinod Punshi, president, Navi Mumbai Environmental Preservation Society, who has been actively involved in mangrove protection for a decade. “He (Punshi) was already aware of the development and had made it an additional prayer as a part of his PIL in the HC for mangrove protection. Based on his suggestion, we staged several protests in October and November last year, and ensured no construction began,” said Sunil.

GujaratWetlands authority exists only on paper Despite repeated instructions from the government of India to from a state wetlands authority, to preserve ecologically important wetlands in the state, the government has ignored them. It had formed a state wetlands authority in May 2017, but that remains on paper only, as the body has not started working. Not a single meeting of the high-powered committee of the authority, which is chaired by the state forests and environment minister, Ganpat Vasava, has been held. The authority is mandated with implementing The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules 2016 and 2010, but nothing has progressed since the body was formed last May. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarat-wetlands-authority-exists-only-on-paper/articleshow/62515336.cms

Op-EdDestruction of Wetlandsby Jayanti Ghosh Supreme Court agrees to construction of hotel in the middle of Udaipur lake, that is sure to destroy the 16th century lake.

– It is worth noting that the Supreme Court was able to go ahead with this even though Udaisagar is a wetland as it held that “in this instant case wetland rules do not have any force on the land in question because there is no relevant notification issued by the competent authority under the rules”.

– Adverse consequences: We can only speculate on the reasons for state procrastination in notifying wetlands and obeying its own rules, but the role of “lobbying” in various forms must explain part of the disproportionate favours (through sins of omission and commission) that have enabled such transgressions. At present, there is a citizens’ movement protesting against this project, but if it gets completed, there will be severe long-term consequences for the ecology of one of Rajasthan’s most important cities and for the surrounding region. The tragedy is that the State government, the Central government and, most disturbingly of all, the Supreme Court of India seem content to allow these adverse consequences to happen. http://www.frontline.in/columns/Jayati_Ghosh/destruction-of-wetlands/article10006443.ece (Front Line, 19 January 2018)

KarnatakaBellandur Lake on fire again Bellandur Lake, the largest of the 262 lakes and tanks in Bengaluru, receives about 40 per cent of the city’s sewage. The Environment Ministry had said in 2016 that everyday about 1,280 million litres of sewage is generated in Bengaluru, while the city’s infrastructure has the capacity to handle only 721 million litres of sewage. Since 137 out of 500 sewage treatment plants are defunct, only 600 million litres sewage is treated and the rest goes to the lakes. The central government had in April 2016 said that it would invest Rs. 800 crore to rejuvenate the lakes in Bengaluru, especially the Bellandur Lake. https://www.ndtv.com/bangalore-news/at-bengalurus-bellandur-lake-massive-fire-rages-for-7-hours-1802343 (NDTV, 19 January 2018)

As per another report, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) which is installing sewage treatment plants (STPs) to stop waste from entering the lake, will be able to complete these projects only by 2020. “Desilting or cleaning work at the lake can be taken up only after 2020, when sewage flow stops. Otherwise, it would be a waste of money as the revival would cost us around Rs 500 crore. The same has been informed to the Tribunal,” said a senior BDA official. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/could-be-arson-says-inspection-team/articleshow/62576864.cms (The Times of India, 20 January 2018)

FISHERIES

– After 365 mini check dams were built across Dakshina Kannada zilla panchayat, the CEO of the ZP, wanted to do more with these ecological way of conserving water. Water has been stored away for almost four months now, so MR Ravi wanted to use these as the destination for fish culture.

MaharashtraMore on Sindhudurg rivers and bio-diversity– Around 8am every day, nine women aged 27 to 55 clamber onto two boats and head to the Mandvi creek in Vengurla, Sindhudurg. The area is home to 45 otters, spread across two dens. The two groups take tourists along a 300-metre stretch on one-hour boat rides, talking to them not just about the marine life but also about the mangroves they depend on. As the tour proceeds, the women use pointed sticks to clear garbage from the mangrove roots.

– These women are part of the Swamini Mahila Bachat Gat, constituted as one of 60 projects in the district that aim to tackle the garbage issue threatening the biodiversity of Sindhudurg’s creeks.

– The 60 programmes are livelihood schemes framed by the state mangrove cell in association with the UNDP-GEF (United Nations Development Programme – Global Environment Facility) Project between 2012 and 2016, based on a study of the coastal ecosystem and the threats it faces.

– Sindhudurg accounts for 3% of Maharashtra’s total mangrove cover but houses more of its coastal biodiversity that any other district in the state.

PunjabPPCB proposes to put off paddy-sowing by 10 daysWelcome suggestion from Punjab Pollution Control Board (strange that this should come from PPCB and not Punjab Groundwater Board or Punjab Agriculture Department or Punjab Water Resources Dept or Punjab Agri University or Union Agri Ministry or ICAR or CGWB or CGWA) to postpone the Paddy transplantation date to June 25 under the Punjab Prevention of Sub Soil Water Act 2009, where the date is June 1 currently. In 2014 the govt suggested to farmers to make it June 15. Good to see that Bharat Kisan Union and Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal agrees.http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/put-off-paddy-sowing-by-10-days-ppcb/530773.html (The Tribune, 19 January 2018)

WATER

MaharashtraGovt hikes bulk water tariff for allWhile this is a welcome, move, at the same time, such industries should be allowed only in water surplus areas, NOT, even at escalated costs, in water deficit areas or seasons.

– The state government has hiked bulk water tariff for all industries that draw water as raw material, like bottled water companies, breweries, soft drink and liquor manufacturers, by 25 times as compared to other industries.

NepalLower Arun hydro kept in govt basketIn 2012, the government had awarded the generation licence for the project to Lower Arun Hydroelectric Company, a subsidiary of Brazil’s Brasspower. At that time, the Brazilian company had planned to develop the project with an installed capacity of 400 MW and export more than 50 percent of the energy generated to India.

– It had even signed a memorandum of understanding with Power Trade India (PTI) to export the energy. With electricity prices going down in India, the power purchase agreement did not happen and the Brazilian company lost interest in implementing the project.

– The department forwarded the applications for Bheri-1, Jagadulla Khola and Kimathanka Arun to the Energy Ministry with the recommendation that Vidhyut Utpadan be granted licences for the three schemes. It kept back the application for Lower Arun and decided to keep the project in the government basket.

– Director general of the DoED Nabin Raj Singh said the department withheld the application as it had already appointed a consultant to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the Lower Arun project located in Sankhuwasabha district.

THE REST OF WORLD

Oroville Dam Suit against Dept of Water Resources– A lawsuit filed Wednesday against the state water agency in charge of the Oroville Dam not only alleges mismanagement and disregard for the public’s safety, but also a toxic work environment rife with racism, sexual harassment and theft.

Previous tripartite meetings on GERD were fruitless, as Ethiopia & Sudan expect massive benefits from the dam construction while Egypt sees it as a threat to its annual share of 55.5 billion cubic meters. Last December, Egypt recommended the WorldBank as a technical mediator in the issue of Ethiopia’s dam building, a proposal that has not been accepted by Ethiopia and Sudan. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/17/c_136903169.htm (Xinhua Net, 17 January 2018)

CLIMATE CHANGE

SundarbanPeople facing sea level rise & cyclonesExcellent piece by Joydeep Gupta:– The Sundarbans straddle the Bangladesh-India border. The Indian part has around five million people living in it. Nilanjan Ghosh, an ecological economist who is a consultant for Observer Research Foundation and WWF India, has led a study that shows 1.5 million of these people will have to be permanently relocated outside the Sundarbans, because sea level rise will make it impossible for them to live there or earn a livelihood.

– At one edge of the Sundarbans – the world’s largest mangrove forest – Mousuni used to have an embankment along Baliara to hold back the rising sea. That collapsed during the 2009 Cyclone Aila. Since then, there have been three attempts to build sea walls, all of which have collapsed against the power of the sea. Scientists say seas around the world are rising due to climate change, but the Bay of Bengal is rising twice as fast as the global average.

– At the confluence of the Muriganga – a distributary of the Ganga – with the Bay of Bengal, Mousuni is a bustling island of about 5,000 households. But over 2,000 of them are in Baliara, and they are under a sentence of displacement or death.

– Where will they go? Salma is not clear, while Jasimuddin says he knows nothing except paddy and freshwater fish farming, so what will he do elsewhere for a living? Over 150 families in Baliara have already left permanently. They could not sell their land, because nobody was interested in wasteland. They just left.

– In contrast, the plight of people in the Sundarbans is not even mentioned in international climate talks, not even by the government of India.

– The problem is far more fundamental than the solutions attempted so far. Apart from sea level rise due to climate change, the entire Sundarbans is sinking because dams and barrages in the Ganga and its tributaries upstream hold back the silt that forms the soil that forms the delta. No policymaker in New Delhi shows any interest in even starting to address that problem.

– Is there a solution at all? Go around 2,000 kilometres from the Sundarbans, down India’s east coast to Pichavaram in Tamil Nadu, and you will see one with potential. Mangroves have been cut down all along the coastlines of South Asia, but there was still a large strand standing at Pichavaram when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit the entire region from Indonesia to East Africa. Coastal villages to the north and south of Pichavaram were devastated, killing many. But the 16 villages shielded by the Pichavaram mangroves from the tsunami wave escaped with very little damage. The mangroves tempered the wave.

GlobalWater crises fuelling to war, migrationThis is eye opening, Nigeria (Chad, Niger), Syria, Somalia, Sahel and now Iran each ch country, in different ways, a water crisis has triggered some combination of civil unrest, mass migration, insurgency or even full-scale war.

– In short, a water crisis — whether caused by nature, human mismanagement, or both — can be an early warning signal of trouble ahead. A panel of retired United States military officials warned in December that water stress, which they defined as a shortage of fresh water, would emerge as “a growing factor in the world’s hot spots and conflict areas.”

– But as David Michel, an analyst at the Stimson Center put it, the lack of water — whether it’s dry taps in the city, or dry wells in the countryside, or dust storms rising from a shrinking Lake Urmia — is one of the most common, most visible markers of the government’s failure to deliver basic services.

– Managing water, he said, is the government’s “most important policy challenge.”

– Iran after the 1979 revolution set out to be self-sufficient in food. It wasn’t a bad goal, in and of itself. But as the Iranian water expert Kaveh Madani points out, it meant that the government encouraged farmers to plant thirsty crops like wheat throughout the country. The government went further by offering farmers cheap electricity and favorable prices for their wheat — effectively a generous two-part subsidy that served as an incentive to plant more and more wheat and extract more and more groundwater.

– The result: “25 percent of the total water that is withdrawn from aquifers, rivers and lakes exceeds the amount that can be replenished” by nature, according to Claudia Sadoff, a water specialist who prepared a report for the World Bank on Iran’s water crisis.

– Iran’s groundwater depletion rate is today among the fastest in the world, so much so that by Mr. Michel’s calculations, 12 of the country’s 31 provinces “will entirely exhaust their aquifers within the next 50 years.” In parts of the country, the groundwater loss is causing the land to sink.

– Iran’s leaders dammed rivers across the country to divert water to key areas. As a result, many of Iran’s lakes have shrunk. That includes Lake Urmia, once the region’s largest saltwater lake, which has diminished in size by nearly 90 percent since the early 1970s.

– Iran expects a 25 percent decline in surface water runoff — rainfall and snow melt — by 2030. In the region as a whole, summers are predicted to get hotter, by two to three degrees Celsius at current rates of warming. Rains are projected to decline by 10 percent.

– Water, said Julia McQuaid, the deputy director of CNA, doesn’t lead straight to conflict. “It can be catalyst,” she said. “It can be a thing that breaks the system.”

Another report confirms that water, environmental and climate change impacts are at the heart of Iranian unrest, this report says.

– In the province, which covers an area slightly larger than the state of Connecticut, there were once 3,800 natural springs, but about 1,100 have dried up, Babadi said, citing official statistics. The Iran Meteorological Organization forecast recently that for the Iranian year ending March 20, rainfall in the province would be more than 80% below the long-term average.

– Many in the predominantly agricultural region complain about a controversial series of canals the government has built to bring hundreds of millions of cubic feet of water from the Karun River, which runs through Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, to growing populations in central provinces.

– Some of the water has gone to state-run steel mills in Esfahan, which Babadi described as “bankrupt industries.” Meanwhile, with the exception of Shahr-e Kord, the provincial capital of about 150,000 people, towns in the area rely on tanker water that is riddled with chemicals, he said.

World Economic ForumThe world’s biggest worries are environmental disasters, not economic collapseWEF, which runs the annual conference in Davos for global elites, found that three of the five most likely global risks for 2018 were environmental—extreme weather, natural disasters, and failure to mitigate climate change. (The report is based on a survey of almost 1,000 experts in business, government, and civil society, mostly polled in September and October last year.) In fact Fourth one is also Environmental: WATER CRISIS.

– Before 2010, environmental risks didn’t register in the top five concerns at all.

Op-EdForest ministry’s ‘new initiatives’This is an excellent article by Ritwick Dutta The least the govt can do is not to call this a document a ‘New Initiative’ for a cleaner and greener India. It is a report card of the concerted efforts being made to ensure that environmental issues are subordinated to larger business interests. If there is anything new in the document, it is the sketches of African elephants and giraffes representing the biodiversity of India. This is not just a mistake; it symbolic of the callous approach to environmental protection and conservation by those in power. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/654223/forest-ministrys-initiatives.html (Deccan Herald, 17 January 2018)